Analysis of Learner Performance on a Tutoring System for Java - Current Issues in IT Education - page 56

across four assessment occasions during a semester-long course. This approach also has
the benefit of showing the generality of the prior findings, when the tutor is administered to
a different group of learners, and of showing the reliability of the previous learning effects
observed under a somewhat different, but related, set of conditions. These conditions
constitute the enhancements to the tutoring system to be described below.
The program that was investigated in Study 2 was identical to the program presented
in our previous classroom work (Emurian & Durham, 2001), with the modification that some
atomic units (i.e., items) in the previous study were combined to yield 21 unique atomic units
and 32 total atomic units. An atomic unit or item was the smallest Java symbol or group of
symbols that was presented for learning and testing. For example, in the previous tutor, the
add symbol and the ( myLabel ) symbol were separate items, and they were combined to
add ( myLabel ) in the present version of the tutor. The rationale for that modification was to
improve the explanatory text of an item by grouping a method name and its argument into a
single item to be learned. Table 1 presents the atomic units as they were organized into 10
rows of code.

TUTORING SYSTEM INTERFACES
The learner progresses through the tutoring system in seven stages: (1) introduction,
(2) item familiarity, (3) item identification, (4) item learning, (5) row familiarity, (6) row learning,
and (7) program learning.
The Stage 1 introduction presents a general orientation of the tutoring system to the
learner. Figure 5 presents three of the windows that are displayed in the introduction. There
are no interactive interfaces in the introduction. The first two windows display the Java code
and the HTML file, respectively. This is to allow the learner to observe the Java code that
will be taught by the tutor. The HTML file is taught in the classroom. The bottom window
displays the running Applet to show the learner what he or she will be able to produce after
completing the tutor and participating in the subsequent classroom presentation. The latter
presentation, administered on the immediately succeeding class period, includes a lecture
discussion of the code, while the students enter the program in a Unix text editor. Compilation

Table 1. Units of code in the Applet; each cell is an atomic unit

Row 1 import java.applet.Applet ;

Row 2

;

import java.awt.Label

Row 3 public class MyProgram extends Applet {

;

Row 4 Label myLabel

Row 5 public void init() {

Label(“This is
my first
program.”)

=

;

Row 6 myLabel new

add(myLabel) ; Row 7

Row 8 myLabel

.

setVisible(true)

;

Row 9 }

Row
10

}